Friday 1 September 2017

Two years of dance

I've been learning to dance for two years now. I started with modern jive and, a few months later, I started learning salsa. I still don't consider myself a good dancer, from a purely technical perspective, but the amount of times I get asked to dance seems to contradict that.

I'm not the best at learning new movements, especially if they're part of a long sequence and involve multiple changes in direction. When I'm shown a new movement, I watch, and I try to take in where my left hand should be, where my right hand should be, what my feet should be doing and, most importantly, where my partner is. Unfortunately, that's not one of my strengths. In effect, I have to translate all of that visual input into a form that works for me, and that's how the move feels.

What I end up with is an approximation of the movement that's a little fuzzy around the edges, but it's enough for me to work with. Maybe being a little different is a good thing, and maybe it contributes to me being asked to dance. I don't know. Maybe it's a question of attitude. I'm always mindful that a lady will want to dance with other men, and that being asked to dance is quite flattering, so I keep her as the focus. If I can help her to show what she does that is unique to her, rather than restricting her by dictating what she does, then I think it's reasonable to expect that men will ask her to dance. After all, that's likely to be what prompted me to ask her to dance, or put a smile on my face when she asked me.

If I'm paired with a relative beginner, I try to imagine what it must be like for her to dance with me. Remembering how it was for me as a beginner is useless, because that was my experience, and her experience will be different. What I try to do is to focus on what she does well, as there will always be something I can highlight as being particularly good. The last thing I'd want would be for her to give up: that's ultimately her decision to make, but it seems a little sad if she gives up out of a belief that she's not capable of being a good dancer.

To me, dancing is about sharing those few moments with someone. I'm not there to show what I can do, or to make anyone else feel bad. I'd rather do a few things well than many things badly. It's not about having a carefully choreographed, set sequence of moves either, and my mind seems to rebel against that anyway. I'm very much about how a move feels, and all of them feel slightly different to me, and some of them feel wildly different or are associated with a specific feeling. Consequently, even with the comparatively limited number of moves I'm able to remember, there's a whole lot of expression in the way I dance, and how I move will depend on who I'm with as much as how I'm feeling. Apart from anything else, the two of us need to conspire to show the rest of the room what she can do.

I've seen leads dancing with two followers at once. If I'm honest, I regard that as showboating, and it doesn't interest me. I have less interest in rueda and birthday circles too, than I have in dancing with one partner for the duration of a song. It feels like an extension of how I prefer one to one conversations to group interactions.

I think that's probably how I should sum this up and bring it to a close. Whether I'm talking to someone when I'm dancing with them or dancing silently, I'm communicating with them and, whether they realise it or not, expressing a whole lot of feeling.